AND A. I. ULYANOVA-ELIZAROVA

8/III. 98.

This week, dear mama, I have not received, it seems, a single letter from you. From this I conclude that Mitya is still inside — this is very sad.

I do not know whether this letter will find N. K. in Moscow. If it does, then I am adding one more forgotten commission. Send me one of our chess sets: it turned out that there are partners among the comrades here in Minusinsk, and I once recalled the old game with great pleasure. I was wrong to think that Eastern Siberia is such a wild country that chess could not be needed here. In Eastern Siberia there are the most various places.

I live as before. The Tesintsys write that E. E.'s allowance has been taken away: "mothers are not considered members of families"

(new clarifications!). Promin's allowance was also reduced from 31 rubles to 19 per month. Anatoly "rescued," finally, after long ordeals, his wife. Yulius writes from Turkhansk that he is living tolerably — a plucky fellow, fortunately!

Your V. U.

I am enclosing a letter for Nadezhda Konstantinovna.

Please send me more funds with Nadezhda Konstantinovna: and if she has already left, then send it in the name of Eliz. Vas. Expenses may be considerable, especially if I have to set up my own household, so I intend to resort to a considerable rounding of my debt and to a second internal loan. By autumn, I shall probably receive enough from the translation to cover my debts — I believe more than five hundreds*.

To Anyute

I want to ask you to get me manuals on the English language. I have taken on a translation here and received a thick book by Webb91. I am very afraid of making mistakes.

I would need

1) a grammar of the English language, especially syntax and especially the section on the idioms of the language. If N. K. does not have Nourrok (she seems to have had it — only I do not know if it is her own), then send me at least his for the summer, if you (or Manyasha) do not need it. I only do not know whether Nourrok gives much on this question? If it is possible to obtain a good manual in the English language, that would be very good.

2) A dictionary of geographical names and proper nouns. The translation and transcription of them from English is very difficult, and I am very much afraid of mistakes. I do not know whether suitable dictionaries exist? If there is no information in the "Book of Books" or in some other index or catalog, then perhaps it is possible somehow from other sources—

* — I believe more than five hundreds. Ed.